Paragraph.appliedLanguage seems to differ from the actual applied language

Report · May 31, 2022

Recently I wrote a script to deal with typographic interpunction glyphs. At some point I got confused:

I've set the doubleQuotes property of one particular language (Deutsch: 2006 Rechtschreibreform) once in the app without any open document (language.id == 61)

app.languagesWithVendors.itemByID(61).doubleQuotes
→ „“

Then I opened a document and applied different glyphs for this (»«). When I now type quotes into the first paragraph, they are replaced by these glyphs.

The glyph setting in the document results in a new language id of 66:

document.languages.everyItem().id
→ 66
document.languages.itemByID(66).doubleQuotes
→ »«

So far, everything is as expected. But when I inspect the language properties of the first paragraph, I get the setting from the app itself, although this does obviously not apply when typing.

document.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem().appliedLanguage.id
→ 61
document.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem().appliedLanguage.doubleQuotes
→ „“

Report · Jun 01, 2022

This I don't understand:

> The glyph setting in the document results in a new language id of 66:

Changing the quotes to different characters shouldn't add any languages.

And this, too, is unclear to me:

document.languages.everyItem().id
→ 66

When I do this, an array is returned that contains the IDs of all installed languages (60, in my case).

What do the following statements return at your end?

app.languageWithVendors.length
app.documents[0].languageWithVendors.length

P.

Report · Jun 01, 2022

When I change the glyph setting in the language, while a document is opened, then I find that this affected language is saved in the document's list of languages (document.languages) and has another id (66) than the original language, that I find in app.languageWithVendors, has (61).

Report · Jun 01, 2022

document.languages.everyItem()

only gives me the one language where I have made a setting, not all installed languages.

Report · Jun 01, 2022

> document.languages.everyItem()

> only gives me the one language where I have made a setting, not all installed languages.

Strange, I don't see that over here in (my UK-English) InDesign.

But what you describe towards the end of your original mail ("But when I inspect the language properties of the first paragraph, I get the setting from the app itself . . .") I can reproduce, and looks like a bug.

Report · Jun 01, 2022

Yes, I agree, but wasn't shure if I understand InDesign correctly, here. In my script I wanted to process text according to the language settings in the document itself. Since for each paragraph I need to look up the applied language, it woud be easy to look for it's settings right there. Instead, I needed to search in document.languages for a language with the same name and use those settings.

Report · Jun 01, 2022

Hi @haukeh96518267 , You might want to loop throught the document languages to make sure you have the right ID, I think the app IDs are going to be different than the doc IDs. Also the doubleQuotes property refers to the glyph that will be used when typographersQuotes is set to true—it wont affect existing quotes. This sets the first paragraph to German: 2006 Reform—114 in my document. After running the script try typing ":

var doc = app.activeDocument
var lang = doc.languages;

/* for (var i = 0; i < lang.length; i++){
    $.writeln(lang[i].name + "   "+lang[i].id)
}; */

//German: 2006 Reform   114
var gr = lang.itemByID(114);

//the doubleQuotes property refers to the glyph used when the typographers quote prefs are turned on
//it wont affect existing quotes
gr.doubleQuotes = "»«"
doc.textPreferences.typographersQuotes = true;
doc.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem().appliedLanguage = gr;

Report · Jun 01, 2022

Also, looks like you can use itemByName, but it’s looking for the untranslated name for German: 2006 Reform—"de_DE_2006". This might be better:


var lang = app.languagesWithVendors;
/* for (var i = 0; i < lang.length; i++){
    $.writeln(lang[i].name + "         "+lang[i].untranslatedName)
}; */ 
var gr = lang.itemByName("de_DE_2006");
gr.doubleQuotes = "»«"
var doc = app.activeDocument;
doc.textPreferences.typographersQuotes = true;
doc.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem().appliedLanguage = gr;

After running the script typing " " gives me this:

Report · Jun 01, 2022

Thanks for suggestions. My script works similar, and does already work fine. I just posted here to better understand the behaviour with the language properties inside the paragraph object. Like Peter, I believe it to be a bug and if so, I's like to report it.

As you already mentioned, itemByName is fiddly with the languages and can basically only be used for specific languages where the internal name is known. When dealing with arbitrary names, one needs to find the internal name using app.findKeyStrings(), but then that doesn't work directly, the key has to be edited somehow. At that point, I gave up and just wrote my own findByName function.

Report · Jun 01, 2022

basically only be used for specific languages where the internal name is known

It’s looking for .untranslatedName not .name (which is listed in the Character panel).

This gets the .name and .untranslatedName properties:

var lang = app.languagesWithVendors;
for (var i = 0; i < lang.length; i++){
    $.writeln(lang[i].name + "   >>     "+lang[i].untranslatedName)
    /* returns:
    [No Language]   >>     [No Language]
    Bengali (India)   >>     bn_IN
    Gujarati (India)   >>     gu_IN
    Hindi (India)   >>     hi_IN
    Kannada (India)   >>     kn_IN
    Malayalam (India)   >>     ml_IN
    Marathi (India)   >>     mr_IN
    Oriya (India)   >>     or_IN
    Punjabi (India)   >>     pa_IN
    Tamil (India)   >>     ta_IN
    Telugu (India)   >>     te_IN
    Bulgarian   >>     Bulgarian
    Catalan   >>     Catalan
    Czech   >>     Czech
    Danish   >>     Danish
    German: Swiss   >>     German: Swiss
    German: Swiss 2006 Reform   >>     de_CH_2006
    German: 1996 Reform   >>     German: Reformed
    German: 2006 Reform   >>     de_DE_2006
    Greek   >>     Greek
    English: Canadian   >>     English: Canadian
    English: UK   >>     English: UK
    English: USA   >>     English: USA
    English: USA Medical   >>     English: USA Medical
    Spanish   >>     Spanish: Castilian
    Estonian   >>     Estonian
    Finnish   >>     Finnish
    French: Canadian   >>     French: Canadian
    French   >>     French
    Croatian   >>     Croatian
    Hungarian   >>     Hungarian
    Italian   >>     Italian
    Lithuanian   >>     Lithuanian
    Latvian   >>     Latvian
    Norwegian: Bokmål   >>     Norwegian: Bokmal
    Dutch: Old Rules   >>     Dutch
    Dutch: 2005 Reform   >>     nl_NL_2005
    Norwegian: Nynorsk   >>     Norwegian: Nynorsk
    Polish   >>     Polish
    Portuguese: Brazilian   >>     Portuguese: Brazilian
    Portuguese: Orthographic Agreement   >>     Portuguese: Orthographic Agreement
    Portuguese   >>     Portuguese
    Romanian   >>     Romanian
    Russian   >>     Russian
    Slovak   >>     Slovak
    Slovenian   >>     Slovenian
    Swedish   >>     Swedish
    Turkish   >>     Turkish
    Ukrainian   >>     Ukrainian
    English: USA Legal   >>     English: USA Legal
    German: Old Rules   >>     German: Traditional
    Hebrew   >>     Hebrew
    Arabic   >>     Arabic
    German: Austria 2006 Reform   >>     German: Austrian
    Indonesian (Indonesia)   >>     id_ID
    Khmer (Cambodia)   >>     km_KH
    Lao (Laos)   >>     lo_LA
    Burmese (Myanmar [Burma])   >>     my_MM
    Sinhala (Sri Lanka)   >>     si_LK
    Thai   >>     Thai */
};

Not sure I’m seeing the problem. When I run my script and type "" (not the Option - [ keyboard command for a typographic quote), I get the expected «» glyphs.

You have to have Preferences> Type >Use Typographer’s Quotes checked, and then type an inch mark when you want to set the «» marks.

Report · Jun 02, 2022

Thanks for the hint about untranslatedName. I had tried app.findKeyStrings(), but that gives another name which is not found by languages.itemByName().

The problem is not that typing would work in an unexpected way, but using paragraphs.firstItem().appliedLanguage.doubleQuotes does not, resp. gives other glyphs than configured for the document. Since my script does the typing for me, it gave wrong glyphs in the first attempt. As described above, I have found a workaround, but still believe that Paragraph.appliedLanguage gives a wrong result. The returned language object has the properties as configured for the application, but not for the document.

Report · Jun 02, 2022

Appologies if I’m missing somthing. A document has a collection of languages, but not an .appliedLanguage property—.appliedLanguage is a character or text property—you could have different languages applied to the words within a single paragraph.

Here my gr variable returns German: 2006 Reform as its name as expected, and the first paragraph’s appliedLanguage name returns the same. If I try to get the document’s appliedlanguage, I get an error.

var lang = app.languagesWithVendors;

var gr = lang.itemByName("de_DE_2006");
gr.doubleQuotes = "»«";
gr.singleQuotes = "‹›"

$.writeln(gr.name) //returns German: 2006 Reform

var doc = app.activeDocument;
doc.textPreferences.typographersQuotes = true;
var p1 = doc.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem();
p1.appliedLanguage = gr;

$.writeln(p1.appliedLanguage.name) //returns German: 2006 Reform
$.writeln(doc.appliedLanguage.name) //returns an error

Report · Jun 02, 2022

The subject admittedly complex, please forgive me, if I'm not explaining it clearly. My script is not supposed to set language properties, but to do typograpy text editing, according to the settings in the document. Since every paragraph might have a different language setting (Paragraph.appliedLanguage), I read this and then look up the quotes which are set for this language. But when I do that in the direct way

myParagraph.appliedLanguage.doubleQuotes

then I get wrong quotes: those as set in the application, not in the document. Instead I have to look up the languages name, find that in document.languages and then get that quotes:

var langName = myParagraph.appliedLanguage.name;
var docLang = findInArray(document.languages, function(dl) {
                return l.name === dl.name;
            });
var quotes = docLang.doubleQuotes;  
// These are the quotes that would apply if the user typed something
// and can differ from myParagraph.appliedLanguage.doubleQuotes

function findInArray(arr, cb) {
    for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; ++i) 
        if (cb.call(this, arr[i])) return arr[i];
    return undefined;
}

Off topic:

gr.doubleQuotes = "»«"; // this is used in Germany and Austria
gr.singleQuotes = "‹›" // this is used in Switzerland.

InDesign does not offer the german/austrian variant for singleQuotes--which is one of the reasons why we need a script to cope with quotes...

Report · Jun 02, 2022

Hi @haukeh96518267

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the icuLocaleName property (an ISO string of the form xx_YY) is available since CS5 and seems to successfully pass the itemByName() method.

E.g.

var icu = 'bn_IN';
var lg = app.languagesWithVendors.itemByName(icu);
alert( lg.isValid && lg.name ); // => Bengali (India)

This doesn't answer your primary question but might help.

Best,

Marc

Report · Jun 02, 2022

When you output an array in some environments, they will get converted to string with a routine that omits the square brackets. With a single item you also get no comma, giving the perception of an integer.

Besides, the applied language is a character attribute. The largest text entity to examine would be textStyleRun rather than paragraph (I think that only looks at the first character). You can also see the effect at the character attributes panel - when the entire paragraph is selected you might see a mixed indicator.

Also don't rely on those IDs, they are allocated consecutively first come first serve in the initial startup process (for application preferences), or when a document is created. The next version of InDesign might behave differently. This has also recently caused some problems where an IDML generator was not prepared for shifting numbers.

I'd have to look for details, but I think there are also some differences between language and language with vendor, e.g. for languages where multiple vendors provide hyphenation etc. dictionary.

Report · Jun 02, 2022

Thanks so far. What is your adivce to look for the language property of text. Inspect textStyleRange? I had looked into the paragraph, because the language is set in the paragraph style. But you are right, this is also in the character style and thus a character property.

Report · Jun 02, 2022

rather than paragraph (I think that only looks at the first character)

Yes, you can see that with this where the loop randomly assigns languages to each word in the paragraph:

var doc = app.activeDocument;
var lang = doc.languages;
var p1 = doc.textFrames.firstItem().paragraphs.firstItem();
var p1w = p1.words;


for (var i = 0; i < p1w.length; i++){
    p1w[i].appliedLanguage = lang.anyItem()
};   


//both of these return a random language
$.writeln(p1w[0].appliedLanguage.name)
$.writeln(p1w[1].appliedLanguage.name)

//paragraph returns the first character’s language when there is a mix
$.writeln(p1.appliedLanguage.name)

Also, doc.languages and app.languagesWithVendors are collections so they don’t neccessarily act like arrays

Report · Jun 08, 2022

After several answers with interesting hints, the basic question remains open: When I do configuration for a language in a document, such as setting doubleQuotes, this language can be found in the document object's list of languages and has another id than that in the application object's list.

But when I access text inside the document – regardless what I inspect, paragraph, words, character, textStyleRange – I always get the language properties as set in the app, not in the document.

I still believe this to be a software bug.

Report · Jun 10, 2022

" I always get the language properties as set in the app, not in the document. I still believe this to be a software bug."

Could also be a questionable design decision. If it is a bug, it is very old and I do not think, it will be fixed soon.

Nevertheless you could do a bug report at InDesign UserVoice.

As a result of this discussion the obvious workaround is to get the value of the appliedLanguage.untranslatedName of a textStyleRange and feed it as argument to doc.languages.itemByName() so you can see the right value for e.g. doubleQuotes or singleQuotes.

var doc = app.documents[0];
var textStyleRanges =
doc.stories.everyItem().textStyleRanges.everyItem().getElements();

for( var n=0; n<textStyleRanges.length; n++ )
{
	var untranslatedName = 
	textStyleRanges[n].appliedLanguage.untranslatedName;
	var doubleQuotes = 
	doc.languages.itemByName( untranslatedName ).doubleQuotes;
	
	$.writeln( n +"\t"+ untranslatedName +"\t"+ doubleQuotes );
};

Thanks to Rob Day who pointed at property untranslatedName.

The code above is working without issues in my German version of InDesign 2022 on Windows 10.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

Report · Jun 10, 2022

Hi Uwe, I don‘t do enough language work to understand why there are two different collections, but the app’s LanguagesWithVendors is a collection of LanguageWithVendors objects, while the document’s Languages is a collection of Language objects. The Language and LanguageWithVendors objects don’t have matching properties, so it’s not surprising that they return different ids.

LanguageWithVendors has dictionaryPaths, hyphenationVendorList, spellingVendorList, and thesaurusVendor properties, which the Language object does not have

Report · Jun 10, 2022

Hi Rob,

well, hyphenationVendor or spellingVendor is also available for language.

dictionaryPaths is not a document specific property so it makes sense to bind it with languageWithVendors in application.

To get a specific hyphenationVendor for a text style range of a document it works very well like this:

var doc = app.documents[0];
var textStyleRanges =
doc.stories.everyItem().textStyleRanges.everyItem().getElements();

for( var n=0; n<textStyleRanges.length; n++ )
{
	var untranslatedName = 
	textStyleRanges[n].appliedLanguage.untranslatedName;
	var hyphenationVendor = 
	doc.languages.itemByName( untranslatedName ).hyphenationVendor;
	
	$.writeln( n +"\t"+ untranslatedName +"\t"+ hyphenationVendor );
};

/*
	
0	de_DE_2006	Duden
1	English: UK	Hunspell
2	de_DE_2006	Duden
	
*/

So I get what I want in case…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

Report · Jun 14, 2022

Thanks, I filed a bug, let's see what happens. For now we have the workaround.

Report · Jun 14, 2022

Voted.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

Report · Jun 14, 2022

Likewise.

Report · Jun 10, 2022

Just a note, also to myself, property untranslatedName of language and languageWithVendors was added to the DOM with InDesign 2015 version 11.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )